In the cutting and shipment of evergreen trees for the Christmas tree trade, a nagging problem has persisted involving the unwated and unsightly accumulation of dead needles within the interior branches of the trees. This has been a particular problem with those tree varieties with very thick bushy growth such as, for example, the Virginia pine.
Manual clearing of the thick clumps of debris is time consuming and laobrious, and thus expensive. While there have been machines offered to clear trees by placing them horizontally on a vibrating platform or cradle, they have not been particularly successful. The apparatus and method of this invention is believed to be the most efficient an economical approach to the problem heretofore devised.